Daniel Pink argues that lingering regrets aren't failures to dismiss but signals worth examining. Treating regret as data helps you negotiate better, solve problems, resist bias, and find meaning in what you do.
Most decisions we make in a given day don't really matter all that much. And I think this is why it's important to think about our regrets. You probably made 100 decisions yesterday, and it's today, and you don't remember most of them. But there are decisions and indecisions that you made, that we made, human beings made, each of us, a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that not only do we remember them, but it bugs us. That's a very strong signal. That's telling us something. And so we have a choice. We can either plug our ears and say, nope, I'm going to be positive all the time. Or we can say, oh my God, I'm the worst person in the world, and let it topple us. Or we can say, huh, that's interesting. That's a pretty strong signal. Let me listen to this signal. Let me use it as data. Let me use it as information. Let me use it as facts that I can interrogate. And when we do that, there's a lot of evidence showing that regret can help us on a whole range of different things. It can help us become better negotiators, better problem solvers, avoid cognitive biases, strategize better, find more meaning in life.
